Terms of Service

What you need to know about this document

The information written here makes up the entire agreement between you and reesenewslab.org, reesefelts.org and any the services provided by the Reese News Lab. If you use any of these sites or services, we’ll assume you’ve read and agreed to the terms below. If you don’t or won’t agree to the terms, please direct your browser to a different site.

Because the Internet is an evolving medium, we may need to change the terms of service from time to time, in which case we will post the revised terms of service on the site. Any changes we make to the Terms of Service take effect right away, and the new Terms of Service overrides any previous Terms of Service we’ve posted here. By continuing to use our services after we post any such changes, you accept the new Terms of Service. We may change, restrict access to, suspend or discontinue this service, or any portion of this service, at any time.

If we fail to exercise or enforce any provision included here in the Terms of Service, all of the rules here still apply – this doesn’t mean they’ve been waived. You agree that if a court of competent jurisdiction finds part of this document to be invalid, the court should still try to give effect to our intentions as reflected here, and that the rest of the Terms of Service should remain effective.

Any claims, legal proceeding or litigation that arise in connection with the Terms of Service will be resolved in North Carolina.

What information do we gather from you?

Your comments

When you leave a comment on the site, anything you write in the comment, along with your screen name, becomes public information. We reserve the right to use this information for promotional or commercial uses, in any form of media.

Note that we will not touch your email address. We won’t sell, trade, or let any third party use your email address without your permission.

Be aware that anything you write in a comment might be read, gathered, or used in any way by anyone else who uses this site. Because comments on the site are public, we cannot prevent this from happening.

Tips

You can use forms throughout the site to submit comments or send us information about issues or subjects you believe we should report on. Anything you write to us will be sent to us in an email. By sending us a tip, you’re agree to let us to report on or otherwise use the information in any way, without attribution.

Surveys

We also collect information from you through voluntary surveys. We run these surveys for research purposes, and use survey results to make the site better, to understand our audience and to serve you more effectively. By participating in a survey, you agree to let us use any information that you provide in our analyses. However, be assured that if you choose to take one of our surveys, the information you provide cannot be traced back to you.

Web analytics

We’re interested in knowing how many people use our services, which stories they’re looking at, where they are coming from, which links they click, and so on.

We use several third-party web analytic services that supply us with this standard site information. These services – Omniture, Google Analytics, and WordPress.com Stats – might place cookies on your browser. And, as is the case on many other webpages, these services may also store your IP address. The information that these cookies gather is not personally identifiable, and it’s delivered to us in aggregate. When the analytics are delivered to us, we use them to make the site better for our readers.

Because web analytics is managed by these third-party services, we don’t have any control over these cookies or how they’re used by the services themselves.

What do we do with the information we gather?

Research and statistical analysis

We use survey, web analytics, and user-generated content to learn more about how readers use news websites and how they interact with news content. From time to time, we might publish summaries of these statistics or of our analyses of them. By using the site, you agree to let us publish this information. However, the data we use in the research, with the possible exception of information published publicly in user comments, will be anonymous and will be analyzed and published in aggregate.

Rules about Content you Submit

By using and leaving comments on our site, you promise to abide by our Community Guidelines. You also agree to not post content that is hateful, threatening, pornographic, or overly-commercial in nature.

In addition, you agree that none of the content you submit violates, plagiarizes, or infringes on the rights of any third party (including copyright, trademark, privacy or other personal or proprietary rights). You also agree that the content you submit doesn’t contain libelous or otherwise unlawful material, and that you are at least thirteen years old. You indemnify, defend and hold harmless reesenews and all reesenews staff, freelancers, and other affiliates from any and all liability and costs in connection with any claim that arises from you, or any other person using your account, not following the rules here in the Terms of Service.

In such a claim arises, reesenews will provide you with written notice.

You retain all of your ownership rights in ay content you submit. However, you hereby grant the Reese Felts Digital News Project a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, and display in connection with the Reese Felts Digital News Project.

Information about site content

Content on our site protected by U.S. and international copyright laws and is owned by or licensed to the Reese Felts Digital News Project. The content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only and may not be used, copied, reproduced, distributed, transmitted, broadcast, displayed, sold, licensed, or otherwise exploited for any other purposes whatsoever without the prior consent of the Reese Felts Digital News Project. The Reese Felts Digital News Project reserves all rights not expressly granted in and to the service and the content.

If you are interested in republishing our content, please contact us at contact@reesenews.org

Copyright Infringement Notification

If you are an owner of intellectual property who believes your intellectual property has been copied and is accessible on this site in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, please notify us by emailing contact@reesenews.org.

Take-down or unpublish requests

As a matter of editorial policy, we do not grant take-down or unpublish requests. If someone claims and can prove an article is historically or factually incorrect, we will correct the article as it appears online and acknowledge the correction on the article page. If a person demands an update to a story – for example, a person was charged with a crime, but there was no report later when charges were dismissed for lack of evidence – we will consider whether further editorial action is necessary, but we will not remove the article as if it had never been published.

Compliance with the Legal Process

You agree that we can access or disclose the information you post on the site, if we’re required to do so in order to comply with any valid legal process or governmental request (like a search warrant, subpoena, or court order), or as otherwise provided here in the Terms of Service.